Paul’s family and aides attempted to depart for Texas when eight Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents refused to allow their passage. According to Lew Rockwell, Paul’s former chief of staff, agents first questioned the pilot’s credentials, then insisted the passengers and plane be searched for explosives. TSA agents did not cite any specific threat, but insinuated the Paul family was a threat to Mitt Romney, claiming the nominee “might be nearby.”

Congressman Paul’s assessment of the Republican party being no different than the Democrats when it comes to government spending and Keynesian economic doctrine is easily exemplified in Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan. As Chairman of the House budget committee, Ryan backed the raising of the debt ceiling in August of last year, and voted for TARP and the Obama stimulus packages which has increased the national debt by more than $2 trillion. His recent speech on cutting spending is actually just a proposal to cut future increases in spending, and not remove much from the over $1.4 trillion annual deficit.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant solar system destinations, to help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta on Sept. 4 PDT (Sept. 5 EDT) to start its two-and-a-half-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres.

In a story that has received very little attention in the national media that tends to take its marching order from the well-funded major parties, the Republican National Committee has spent much of this past week trying to unseat duly elected delegates to the national convention because they are supporters of Congressman Ron Paul. The final blow came yesterday when the RNC, unable to get the Maine delegation to comply with a series of so-called compromises, simply decided to nullify the entire Maine delegation and replace them with their own hand-picked delegates. In effect, the Republican National Committee has said that Maine does not exist. In response to this perceived abuse of power, Republican Governor Paul LePage from Maine quickly made a statement that he will follow through with his promise to boycott the National Convention because he believes his citizens are being disenfranchised.

Later in the day, the RNC passed a new rule, giving itself power to change any rule without a delegate vote. Grass roots Republicans have reacted by calling this a power-grab designed to stifle dissent. They believe the GOP is consolidating power in an attempt to override grass roots intentions that may run counter to their top-down agenda. Grass roots activists believe Governor Romney is either behind this top down assault or he is a perpetrator by omission. In either scenario, many are seeing this as a harbinger of what would come if the Governor were elected President of the United States. On the surface it looks like a management style that would be a threat to representative democracy.

Delegates from Nevada tried to nominate Mr. Paul from the floor, submitting petitions from their own state as well as Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Oregon, Alaska and the Virgin Islands. That should have done the trick: Rules require signatures from just five states. But the party changed the rules on the spot. Henceforth, delegates must gather petitions from eight states.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, has died, following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. He was 82.

Armstrong’s words “That is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind,” spoken on July 20, 1969, as he became the first person ever to step onto another planetary body, instantly became a part of history.

Those few words from the Sea of Tranquillity were the climactic fulfillment of the efforts and hopes of millions of people and the expenditure of billions of dollars. A plaque on one of the lander’s legs that concluded “We came in peace for all mankind,” further emphasized that Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were there as representatives of all humans.

In a 2001 oral history interview, Armstrong credited those behind the scenes for the mission’s success: “when you have hundreds of thousands of people all doing their job a little better than they have to, you get an improvement in performance. And that’s the only reason we could have pulled this whole thing off.”

Armstrong is survived by his wife, two sons, a stepson, a stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, and a brother and sister.

The Affordable Care Act assumes deep reductions in payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and Medicare Advantage program, totaling $716 billion over ten years. By paying providers less, the trust fund may last a bit longer, but it means seniors will have a harder and harder time finding a doctor to see them as they drop out of the program or stop taking new Medicare patients. The law may not explicitly cut benefits, but it certainly will impact access to care. What good is a Medicare card if you can’t find a doctor? That is precisely the problem that patients on Medicaid — the program for lower-income Americans — face today, forcing them to go to hospital emergency rooms for even routine care.

Banned from the Republican National Convention microphone for his refusal to fully endorse Mitt Romney — and simultaneously stripped of many of his own convention delegates through procedural wrangling — the veteran Texas congressman let fly with both barrels at his final campaign rally.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Thursday new milestones in the nation’s commercial space initiatives from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The latest advances made by NASA’s commercial space partners pave the way for the first contracted flight of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) this fall and mark progress toward a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next 5 years.

There is no enumerated power for the federal government to create a national ID and there is no enumerated power authorizing the feds to run the entire U.S. health care system,” he said. “Maine, and several other states refused to comply with Real ID and said, ‘We aren’t going to go along with it; it is unconstitutional.’ Because of this, that law is basically gone and is not being enforced. We need to do the same thing with Obamacare.

The proposed Gold Commission — expected to be approved next week as part of the party platform at the Republican National Convention — would peg the U.S. dollar to gold instead of to other currencies and interest rates as it is today, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the platform committee co-chair, told the Financial Times.

The gold standard was abandoned by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1971.

The platform expected to be voted on in Tampa, Fla., would also call for an audit of Federal Reserve System’s monetary policy, Blackburn told the newspaper.

Paul continues to urge respectful discourse. He know his supporters are inclined to get excited, and he wants them to fight their battles courteously, bearing in mind that kindness and patience are more effective than threats and taunts. He is paving a way for them to take when he is gone.

Ron Paul still has hope for the GOP. He has a vision of what the GOP can become.

Quantitative easing amounts to printing more money to increase the money supply which is the definition of inflation. Inflation leads to higher prices and amounts to a theft of savings. How do they think the economy will respond to that?

Undoubtedly, these expressions concerned federal authorities, but was detainment for “psychological evaluation” without respect for Raub’s rights to Due Process warranted? Raub has no history of mental illness and a reputation for organizing peaceful political demonstrations.

So, how did Romney and his supporters handle their losses of five measly states to Ron Paul? Honorably? Graciously? With dignity? Maturely?

No. Quite the opposite.

Romney’s people ran to Big Daddy GOP to rescue them from their defeats by trying to disqualify the valid Ron Paul delegates and to take away Ron Paul’s right to speak and be on the ballot by reducing his states won to fewer than the five needed.

The Texas congressman will get 17 of the Louisiana’s 46 delegates in the compromise, said Charlie Davis, who served as Paul’s campaign chairman in Louisiana. The rest of the state’s delegates are expected to support Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee.

On August 21, 1992 a paramilitary unit of the U.S. Marshals Service ventured onto the 20-acre property known as Ruby Ridge. A man named Randy Weaver owned the land and he lived there with his wife, children, and a family friend, Kevin Harris. There was an outstanding warrant for Weaver’s arrest for a firearms offense and the marshals were surveilling the premises. When the family dog noticed the marshals sneaking around in the woods, it began to bark wildly. Weaver’s 14-year-old boy, Sammy, and Kevin Harris proceeded to grab their rifles because they thought the dog had come upon a wild animal.

A firefight erupted when a marshal shot and killed the dog. Enraged that the family pet had been cut down for no good reason, Sammy shot into the woods at the unidentified trespasser. Within a few minutes, two human beings were shot dead: Sammy Weaver and a marshal. Harris and the Weaver family retreated to their cabin and the marshals retreated from the mountain and called the FBI for assistance.

During the night, FBI snipers took positions around the Weaver cabin. There is no dispute about the fact that the snipers were given illegal “shoot to kill” orders. Under the law, police agents can use deadly force to defend themselves and others from imminent attack, but these snipers were instructed to shoot any adult who was armed and outside the cabin, regardless of whether the adult posed a threat or not. The next morning, an FBI agent shot and wounded Randy Weaver. A few moments later, the same agent shot Weaver’s wife in the head as she was standing in the doorway of her home holding a baby in her arms. The FBI snipers had not yet announced their presence and had not given the Weavers an opportunity to peacefully surrender.

The new mission, called InSight, will attempt to determine whether Mars’ core is liquid or solid, and why the Red Planet’s crust does not appear to be composed of drifting tectonic plates like Earth’s is. Such information could help scientists better understand how rocky planets form and evolve, researchers said.

The Paul campaign attorney told the Republican National Committee’s Committee on Contests a political battle could erupt at next week’s convention in Tampa, Fla., over its promised refusal to seat Paul delegates.

The RNC fears Paul’s supporters from at least six states will disrupt the convention, which is intended to coalesce support for Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, The Portland (Maine) Press Herald reported.

I don't think Ron Paul delegates should support Romney anyway. I mean what is the point? The RNC and the GOP are clearly trying to drive Ron Paul, his supporters and his ideas away from the party. Otherwise, they would not be working so hard to to the point of violating their own rules and changing them as they go along to keep his delegates and Ron Paul himself out of the convention.

The thousands of criminal convictions have resulted from the arrest of individuals, both employees and non-employees, associated with components of DHS. These include individuals who either conspired with a DHS employee or were linked to the crime that was being investigated by the IG. The DHS IG’s investigative work has prompted a total of 2,527 convictions of corruption and other criminal misconduct since around the time when DHS began operating.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 in major cities across the U.S. No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.

The financial catastrophe of 2008 has made the public increasingly mistrustful of the Fed and its covert activities. A poll conducted in 2010 showed that the majority of Americans believed that the Fed should be severely reigned in or abolished. In a separate survey conducted by Rasmussen in 2010, 80 percent of Americans believed that the Fed should be thoroughly audited. As a result of its own actions, the Fed is now hotly debated in print, television, and in our public square.

Ron Paul has just been right so damn much of the time. From his predictions of the housing bubble and collapse, to his predictions on what we would do in the middle east and how it turned out, to his observations of the Federal Reserve. You would think he would get a little more respect.

Even though the Romney campaign seems certain it has the Republican nomination won before the convention, its operatives have been working in states such as and Louisiana to ensure Paul cannot claim five states with a plurality delegates and in turn deny Paul’s legitimate right for a fifteen minute speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

This should lead many Americans to question why Romney would be working feverously to further disenfranchise a group of voters he must have to defeat Obama, and what he has to lose by allowing Ron Paul the fifteen minute speech he rightfully earned according to the rules of the Republican National Convention.

In national politics, where perception is almost always more important than reality, Ryan has managed to perpetrate one of the greatest scams in recent memory by making conservatives believe he’s a glorious mix of Ron Paul, Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater.

Paul Ryan voted for TARP, Medicare Part D (unfunded), auto bailouts, No Child Left Behind, ethanol subsidies and more. What a politician says is far less important than what he actually does. Paul Ryan's record speaks for itself.

Ryan’s voting record is full of support for things that no fiscal conservative could support, much less a libertarian. Anybody who believes that his candidacy is a win for libertarians or fiscal conservatives isn’t paying attention.

One of the most egregiously irresponsible spending measures of the last few years was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which forced U.S. taxpayers to purchase the so-called “toxic assets” of big banks. Pure and simple, it was a bailout for banks to allow them to get loans off their books. Ryan not only voted for TARP, but he enthusiastically supported it.

The scenario presented in Small Wars Journal isn’t a literary device but an operational lay-down intended to present the rationale and mechanisms for Americans to fight Americans. Col. Benson and Ms. Weber contend, “Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil.” This is a dark, pessimistic and wrongheaded view of what military leaders should spend their time studying.

College-aged people are now experiencing the failures of Keynesian economics championed by liberal professors. Excessive taxation and regulations kill jobs, and increased government spending always hurts economic growth.

It shouldn’t take a college degree to figure out that every dime the government spends must first be taken from someone else. And politicians can’t spend your money better than you can. That should be Common Sense 101.

...

More young adults in their 20’s believe they are more likely to see a UFO in their lifetime than a Social Security check.

That ruling allows the delegates that were elected by the establishment LA GOP to be seated at the convention, rather than the duly elected delegates that represented the voters of Louisiana in four of six districts.

Just goes to show you how undemocratic the election process has really become. You are basically presented with a 'choice' between two appointed candidates. If those in power within the party don't like the result of an election, they simply change the rules so that they can change the results.

Pictures in the 12-year-old file show bruises on Maddox’s girlfriend. Maddox was suspended for leaving his gun in her home when she was suicidal and for driving his patrol car after drinking, although he was not drunk. The file said he could have been prosecuted for battery, but the victim would not cooperate.

Curiosity, which is also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, successfully touched down on Mars on Sunday (Aug. 5 PDT), and has already snapped a flurry of photos, including sweeping black-and-white and color images of the Martian landscape and a self-portrait. In a news briefing today (Aug. 9), NASA released images and video of Curiosity’s first color panorama view, a mosaic taken on the rover’s third full day on Mars, which mission managers refer to as Sol 3.

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

While you can see the Perseids any night this week, your chances will be better after local midnight (1 a.m. if you’re on daylight saving time) on any particular night, and your chances will be best on Saturday night (Aug. 11) and Sunday morning (Aug. 12), because that’s when we will be in the center of the comet track.

Sure enough, now that the data are in, the emerging consensus is that health care costs, rather than “skyrocketing,” have been moderating, even flat-lining. And they were beginning to do so well before Congress passed ObamaCare in March 2010.

Gazillions. That’s the number of times the federal government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search warrants, federal agent-written search warrants and just plain government spying. This is according to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who, when he asked the government to tell him what it was doing to violate our privacy, was given a classified briefing. The senator — one of just a few in the U.S. Senate who believes that the Constitution means what it says — was required by federal law to agree not to reveal what spies and bureaucrats told him during the briefing.

If you raise the cost for a business then you raise the cost for the products that business produces. Is this really a surprise to anyone? $0.11 to $0.14 per pizza may not sound like much but expect similar price increases across a wide variety of products and services as Obamacare is implemented.

Reuters reports this week that the government believes they are justified to have the authorization to lock alleged belligerents up indefinitely because cases involving militants directly aligned against the good of the US government warrants such punishment. Separate from Judge Forrest’s injunction, nine states have attempted to, at least in part, remove themselves from the indefinite detention provisions of included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA.

In section 1021 of the NDAA, the president’s authority to hold a terrorism suspect “without trial, until the end of the hostilities” is reaffirmed by Congress. Despite an accompanying signing statement voicing his opposition to that provision, President Obama quietly inked his name to the NDAA on December 31, 2011. In May, however, a group of plaintiffs including notable journalists and civil liberty proponents challenged section 1021 in court, leading to Just Forrest to find it unconstitutional one month later.

I believe education is extraordinarily important but economic times are tough for everyone. Government needs to start saving for a rainy day instead of trying to raise taxes on people who are already hurting economically whenever there is an economic downturn. I will NEVER vote for a candidate or a ballot measure that raises taxes. Taxes are already way to high and spending is out of control. Find the money elsewhere if it is truly needed for education but given the amount per student that is already invested I find that doubtful.

This article should be re-titled 'Brevard School Board candidates differ on taxes'.

This raises the question of whether the US administration is supporting the same people in Syria that we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed these same concerns earlier this year when asked whether the US has been reluctant to arm the Syrian rebels. She answered, “To whom are you delivering them? We know al-Qaida. Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al-Qaida in Syria?”

That is a very good question. It clearly demonstrates that the United States has no business at all being involved in the Syrian civil war. In the 1980s we supported a resistance movement in Afghanistan that later gave birth to elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When will we learn our lesson and stop intervening in conflicts we don’t truly understand, conflicts that have nothing to do with American national interests?

What we’re actually witnessing — and have been for years now — is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government. Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn’t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.

How is it these morons, from the president on down through most members of congress, get elected by the American people. Are we collectively this stupid or has the system simply become to corrupt to function properly?

“It is with great sadness and humility that I am calling a special meeting of our body. I thought that we had finally began healing after the convention. I thought we were ready to move on, work out our differences and strengthen our party in the House and Senate,” Jonathan Pfaff a Cumberland committeeman and Paul supporter wrote in an email circulating the letter. “Unfortunately, our National Committeewoman, Jan Staples, has other priorities. She has decided to put her own personal agenda ahead of Maine Republicans. Some have argued she’s done this out of spite for her unsuccessful bid to be re-elected. Some have argued that she’s being offered a deal by Mitt Romney’s campaign.”

In an unparalleled technological triumph, a one-ton nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car was lowered to the surface of Mars on the end of a 25-foot-long bridle suspended from the belly of a rocket-powered flying crane late Sunday to kick off an unprecedented $2.5 billion mission.

In order to provide faster shipping, Amazon is building warehouses throughout the country. These warehouses constitute a “physical presence,” which requires them to collect sales taxes, in any event. So, if Amazon is going to have to collect sales taxes under the existing “physical presence” doctrine, it may as well try to expand online sales taxes to whack its smaller competitors who don’t have a 50-state network of giant warehouses.

Brossart’s lawyer argued that law enforcement’s “warrantless use of [an] unmanned military-like surveillance aircraft” and “outrageous governmental conduct” warranted dismissal of the case, according to court documents obtained by U.S. News.

Presidential appointees that would no longer require Senate confirmation under the legislation include the treasurer of the United States and the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.

“The United States Constitution does not bestow kingly powers on the President to appoint the senior officers of the government with no process,” wrote Thomas McClusky, the senior vice president for the Family Research Council’s legislative arm, in a Monday memo to lawmakers.

“We believe that they grossly and blatantly and repeatedly violated their party rules and elected a delegation that was improper,” said Paul’s campaign chairman Jesse Benton. “We believe that our rump convention is the legitimate delegation and they have a right to be seated at the Republican National Convention.”

Even some Romney partisans from the state are telling the RNC that the delegation the Louisiana state party is trying to send to Tampa is illegitimate.

Recently, the circle completed itself. More than a decade after NIDA spent an unreported amount creating Spice, the Drug Enforcement Administration spent millions raiding gas stations and headshops across the county reported to be selling it.

Another interesting note is that Paul’s 2012 votes had doubled, tripled, and more than quadrupled his 2008 votes in every state leading up to the Nevada caucuses, yet Paul received only 88 more votes there. Of all the places for this to occur, Nevada, the country’s most libertarian state; is the last in which anyone would expect this.

In spite of these irregularities , Paul won 22 of 25 state delegates and replaced state party officials with Paul supporters. Romney supporters then formed their own state party, called “Team Nevada”. The RNC then bypassed the official state party in order to organize for Romney and send all funds to Team Nevada.

Colorado: Romney supporters were caught passing out fake Ron Paul slates at the state convention. The RNC has not investigated or even commented on the matter.

Who knows what might have happened had Ron Paul been given a fair shot. Either way, this list of GOP rule violating and potentially illegal actions is truly frightening in a supposedly democratic process. - http://14a67fb4.tinylinks.co

“It is little known that there is a federal agency that tops the others in secrecy by a country mile. The Federal Reserve System is accountable to no one; it has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, in total control of the nation’s vital monetary system, is accountable to nobody — and this strange situation, if acknowledged at all, in invariably trumpeted as a virtue.” - Free-Market Economist Murray N. Rothbard, 1994.